Edy Ferguson
The Centre is hosting the first retrospective of American artist Edy Ferguson in Switzerland and her biggest in-depth solo exhibition to date. More than one hundred works have been assembled in Geneva for an installation that is tantamount to a “Gesamtkunstwerk” – a total art work – and that shows the extent to which the artist’s work has anticipated many of the debates central to artistic creation today.
In her artistic practice, Edy Ferguson uses multiple media – sound and video installations, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and performance – and multiple references drawn from film iconography, rock music and the spirit of punk, especially from the years 1960–1970. Each work combines an array of references which converge and interreact in the exhibition to weave nothing less than a web of values and meanings. The exhibition is conceived as a single and articulated “Gesamtkunstwerk”, featuring the artist’s vision in its full complexity, with all of its stratifications.
By referencing “rich” and “poor” cultures, Edy Ferguson questions our emotional responses to artistic creation, the liberating power of images and music, and the way in which our different takes on reality contradict each other.
The curatorial criterion for this show – of which a first version was presented at the Benaki Museum at the beginning of the summer (Selected Works 1993 – Present, June 1st to July 29th, 2012) – lies in the belief that Ferguson has anticipated a number of issues that happen to be at the core of the current artistic debate.
The artist is interested in particular in the real, participative presence of the art work: how can the uselessness of a dead product on a market that carries on regardless be avoided? how can an art work come to life and occupy the space of reality? Edy Ferguson was born in the United States. She lives and works in New York, London and Athens.
After studying painting and sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis, she moved to New York where she worked in film and made video clips. Subsequently, she studied for a master’s at Hunter College (Film and video installation, painting). She has exhibited in New York and San Francisco, and in Venezuela, France and Austria. She has also recently exhibited at the Benaki Museum and the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens. The many prizes and grants she has received include awards from such leading contemporary art institutions as PS1 in New York, and an MTV Music Award for the video clip of the song “Jeremy” by the group Pearl Jam in 1993.
Curated by Paolo Colombo
In Partnership with Pernod Ricard Swiss and Le Courrier.
A collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens and Athens Festival.
